IN 1950, the San Francisco Bay Area and Boston could boast some of the most prestigious biomedical research labs in the US. Then there was San Diego – home to the US Navy’s Pacific fleet, picturesque homes and plenty of sunshine. It was an odd combination of military town and vacation backwater, with an oceanography institute and an excellent zoo.
The city’s trinity of academic centres for biomedical science – the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), The Scripps Research Institute and the Salk Institute – wouldn’t be completed until the mid-1960s. No one could have guessed that this city would one day be a Mecca…
